A Human Reaction
by a red burn
Summary: It was a sum of errors that brought them to the one situation she didn’t know how to deal with. JJReid


Title: A Human Reaction.  
Author: Andréa.  
Summary: It was a sum of errors that brought them to the one situation she didn't know how to deal with.  
Disclaimer: I own nothing.  
A/N: This is a small piece that wouldn't leave me alone. I tried beating it with a stick, sleeping on it, but all it seemed to do was spur me on. I considered writing the whole damn case but I figured it'd be too much of a work to create a whole world around a single scene that happened to be one of the very last if there was a full story. I decided to simply write this part as a stand-alone and put this dead horse to rest.

Hopefully many of you will enjoy it.

Thanks Sarah for beta-ing this for me.

-

She broke down.

He couldn't remember how exactly they had ended up that way. Sitting on her hotel room bed, he had her in his arms, soaking his shirt with her tears, sobbing her pain. He had held her, whispered sweet nothings in her ear, calmed her as best as Spencer Reid was capable of. It was okay to him, slightly awkward, but so far he had managed to tuck away his general awkwardness in order to give JJ the proper comfort she deserved.

Not comfort, he tried to remind himself; not comfort, but a pain killer in the form of human warmth; some humanity.

She was soft against him but her skin felt cold; he wondered if he should untangle himself from her and grab a sweater to put on her skinny form; warm her up. He didn't have the willpower to separate from her, though, and he believed she wouldn't let him, either. Instead he enveloped her in his arms, holding her tight to him, one of his hands stroking her blond hair as her pain flowed away and soaked into his bones.

She shivered in his arms and he didn't know if it was from the cold he supposed she was feeling or the sobs that refused to subside. She clung to him like no one ever had, and just beneath his skin he felt somehow important because of it. Important to her.

Her arms tightened on his back as they held him firmly around just above the waist; her hands closed in a fist, his shirt being captive inside her tiny yet strong hands. She sniffled, breathing in deeply the scent on his neck; he smelled good.

His hand never stopped its ministrations on her hair, brushing her tresses back away from her face, going down, under her hair, his warm palm against her cool neck, thumbing stroking slightly, sending obligatory shivers down her spine, rising every hair on her body. She closed her eyes at the sensation; it felt so good that she forgot her pain for a moment.

Eventually she started getting control of her reactions; her sobs finally came to an end, but mostly due to her lungs losing the ability to hold enough air to feed her tears. Her arms loosened behind him and Reid took that as a cue to do the same. He pulled away just enough to catch her attention, his hands moving from her neck and back to cradle her face.

Red and puffy eyes stared up at him; the natural beam in the blue orbits was momentarily lost to be replaced by the glimmer of tears. Her face was swollen and humid and her bangs clung to her cheeks. She sniffled and brought a hand up to wipe her running nose. She looked beautiful.

"Feel better?" He whispered, as if afraid that any noise would break whatever spell had been cast on the room; as if it'd break into her senses and she'd realize just whom she was leaning onto. His fingers gently brushed her hair behind her ear, wiping the remaining tears away. She looked messy and broken and so beautiful and Reid felt guilty for allowing the thought to invade his mind. Somehow, thinking of JJ that way while said girl was half in his arms hurt and broken as she did, felt sinful and wrong.

She shrugged in response, a weak, soft move he almost didn't catch, as her eyes dropped, her hand coming up to lazily finger his askew tie. "I feel… stupid," she muttered, finding his wrinkled shirt and ugly tie suddenly very interesting.

Stupid? She been through some major trauma just hours ago and had finally allowed herself to respond to it. "Why?"

She looked up, the glimmering in her eyes replaced by something else. She ignored his question. "I feel…" She bit her lip, looking like she wanted to say something, do something, and closed her mouth to keep inside whatever that wanted to come out. In the back of his head, Reid had a feeling that this 'whatever' was something bad.

Her hands hung loosely behind his back, two fingers locked to keep her arms together. One of his hands was still on her cheek, the other had found its way down to her neck and into the crook between her shoulder and jaw, exactly above the bandage that covered the two holes that separated JJ from death by a mere millimeter in the right direction. She was lucky her attacker had an aim worse than he.

While being cornered by Gideon and Reid, the unsub had managed to grab JJ and use an ice pick hidden beneath his undershirt to threaten her –worse, he simply stuck the ice pick into her neck once, twice, and then he decided it was time for the life threatening strategy. Reid had barely kept control of himself when he saw the blood flowing out of the perfect holes in her neck, but logic had worked on his favor, as it screamed to him that there wasn't enough blood to mean the aorta had been cut. They had managed to convince the unsub to let her go, his ego playing a big part in their favor, so as soon as JJ's body had hit the floor, soon the unsub's followed, except that his was dead, as they exchanged bullets.

Later that day, the doctors had said what a close call it had been; one millimeter to the right and she would have bled to death if it had not been controlled. All it earned were a few stitches that'd leave no scars, the doctor assured them. No scars that could be seen, Reid thought to himself.

He had been afraid for her; she had been in shock. When the sun had dipped beyond the horizon and the sky turned black, she had insisted on going back to the hotel after all the hospital bureaucracy had been resolved.

She tried to be cool and collected and deal with the situation as strongly as possible, but once the door of her hotel room had closed, and she heard the soft click, her brain translated the security of the four walls as a cue that she was now allowed to fall apart. Her wounds were stinging, her head spinning, her whole body shivering, but she never noticed any of it. She let the tears stream down, her breath catch in her throat, as she told Reid how she had been panicky while in the unsub's grasp, how it turned into sheer and utter terror when he forced the ice pick into her skin, feeling every single inch of it entering her neck, penetrating every layer of flesh and muscle. How it felt as if it had went all the way through just to be pulled back out, how it hurt, how it happened all over again. How scared she was when she felt the hot liquid run down her neck, drip to her shoulder, and thinking that this was it, the end.

He had hurt for her. Feeling every tear, every shiver, every sob is if they were his own.

Now she was safe and in his arms and deep inside, something told Reid that it was just the right place to be.

She stared into his eyes, dark and wide and understanding and something flashed in her blue ones. He watched her close her eyes and breathe deeply, biting on her lip again. He smiled at her, her intentions unknown to him until her lips had covered his, breaking his smile, hands tightening again behind his neck as she pulled him to her and refused to let go. His hands on her felt good, and soothing and gentle; she felt alive. When he realized, he was already in too deep.

She slid her lips against his, demanding and firm at first, angling her head for better access. One hand slid from his neck to his face, flatly against his cheek, her slim fingers directing his head to her, caressing as it went up to his head, sticking every one in his hair.

She heard a moan but didn't know who had let it out.

There was soft sound as their lips parted and he breathed onto her mouth, his heart rate speeding up considerably. "JJ-"

She interrupted, seeking his mouth again before any other sound could be uttered, her lips once again above his. It was overwhelming, his skin so warm and his hands so gentle and his voice so soft. Her brain was blank, her soul cracked and all the implications and consequences of what she was willing to do didn't seem to be a matter to be bothered with. She leaned further in, nearly straddling him, the bed sinking under their weight.

He tried to object with words, but his body wasn't in agreement with his mouth, except for the fact he was kissing her as much as she was kissing him, his hand flat on her back, pulling her to him. The tip of her tongue pushed between his lips and he shivered all the way to his toes. There went his brain functions. Goddamnit.

That was that. She had her tongue stuck all the way to his throat, her hands all over him, his hands all over her, feeling, testing, enjoying. His body was moving without his permission. And he didn't care; he wasn't aware of his body moving, just as long as her mouth was on his, just as long as he could taste her tongue, just as long as he could feel every inch of her body warming every inch of his.

Her hands moved down to his front, tugging at the hem of his vest, pulling it up, their mouths separating for the necessary seconds. The vest slid off his arms and over his head, and she threw it somewhere behind her, her hands moving again to his front, pulling his tie off, then working on the buttons of his white shirt.

He tried objecting again; this can't happen, tried putting a stop to this, but every time he tried pulling back, she leaned in again, pressing their lips together, tongues dueling, so many times it came to a point where he was lying back on the bed and she was straddling him for once, his shirt completely unbuttoned. Her warm hands on his chest, his hands cradling her head, angling, giving better access, tongues tasting, lips fighting. It felt too good.

She separated their lips long enough to pull her navy blue shirt over her head, letting it fall to the floor, revealing the black lacy bra she wore. Her skin was pale and freckled and smooth to the touch. She leaned back in; their lips locked once more, one of his hands tightening on her hip as the other pressed on the back of her neck. He squeezed his eyes shut beneath her; her hair falling on his face, brushing his cheeks, tickling, his body moving of its own accord as he helped her removed his shirt.

He turned them over, by now his brain had lost all capacity of thinking, calculating, ignoring the red lights blinking in front of his eyes, the stop sign, the warning sign. It's too going too fast, Spencer, going too fast. Her hands were grasping at his face, holding him to her, wet kisses, tongues moving, as Reid's hands traveled down her body, feeling every inch, stopping for a second as his index circled her navel, then unbuttoning her jeans. There was no way back now. Somewhere inside the fogginess of his brain, he knew the morning would come, and the aftermath wasn't going to be the perfection he hoped for. It wasn't going to be pretty.

-

JJ's subconscious kept awakening her senses, reminding her of where she was and who was fitted perfectly under her, her arm thrown across his bare chest as it rose and fell, her head positioned over his heart as its beat slowly lulled her into a trance, his arm lay along hers, the other softly around her back, hand idly resting above her bare hip.

His hand wasn't moving but it was still enough to make every tiny hair on her arm rise, giving her complete goose flesh.

The first coherent thought that crossed her mind since she had regained full consciousness was that this shouldn't have happened, it was wrong and so fucked up and now she had an ugly mess to undo because it had been all her fault. Still, the heartbeat under her ear made her feel as if this was the exactly right place to be. Instinctively, she snuggled into his loose embrace, praying he wasn't going to wake up any moment and break this perfect scene. The warmth enveloping her body was relaxing and soothing and almost made her forget the particularities of the world that waited outside - almost, but not quite.

What was she going to do? She had been so messed up last night that she hadn't cared about the consequences. While she undressed him, the only thought her brain could muster was how perfect the situation was, how needy she felt, how death knocked on her door and she had nearly opened it.

Reid had fallen asleep easily. It had been a rough few days and sleep was something one normally got when the sky was dark, but they didn't, not as they should whenever they were on a case. The workload didn't allow them the normalcy other people had. Reid had fallen asleep easily, but it didn't mean his sleep was peaceful. On several occasions, while JJ couldn't shut her brain down and find dreamland herself, she witnessed Reid groaning and muttering under his breath and differently from hours before, these were not sounds of pleasure. She had pressed a hand to his forehead, stroking just above his eyebrows, whispering soothing words into his ear, holding him tight until his body had stopped tossing and turning and his nightmare was gone. She then had combed his hair back with her fingers, kissing his sweaty forehead, and tried to make herself fall asleep.

When she had woken up once again, daylight shone in through the thin curtains, weak and soft. He was still sleeping, his chest making the only movement of his body. It was a wonder she wasn't lying on top of him, her legs entwined with his, his heartbeat under her ear. She marveled, enjoying this moment until she'd have to end it.

Until she'd have to face the reality, a way to undo it all. But until then, she was going to pretend that this was it. Pretend she needed no common sense.

How had she not realized what she felt for him? How had she been so incredibly blind? They were friends, and it was okay with her on some levels, but now that she had brought their friendship to another level, she didn't know what to do. How could she tell him that while death invaded her thoughts, another thing also invaded her mind? She couldn't stop thinking about if there was something more to it, something that was right under the surface she had failed to notice.

And now she had forced him into something she didn't know if he was ready for, something she didn't know if he even wanted.

She squeezed his hand, letting herself fall into the illusion that everything would be okay. She was going to simply enjoy the moment and pretend the aftermath was miles way. Pretend that it wouldn't be as easy for him to reject her as it had been for her to let her feelings overwhelm her sanity.

-

The end.


End file.
